Description
by Clare Seven
Kirian was a former warrior, a mercenary. She agreed to impersonate Lord Hardor’s wife and suffer public punishment for adultery, with the promise of help to free her sister who had been condemned to serve as a rower on a cargo galley. But it was far from simple. Slowly recovering from the punishments, Kirian would have to seek assistance for the task that lay ahead of her, and those that might help would have an agenda of their own.
In uncompromising, horrific detail, Clare Seven tells of the evil torments of Lady Demos’ domain in the darkest dungeons of Lord Hardor’s castle, the madness of the wicked Lord, depravity in the innermost chambers of the Thieves’ Guild, the terrible punishments inflicted on those sentenced to the oar and, above all, the story of those who endured and who fought against the worst terrors to be reunited with the ones they loved. A story of loyalty, of betrayal, of sadistic tyranny and, most of all, of bravery and even of love.
28,800 words
Kirian walked back to the dockside warehouse silently with Trask. They moved in silence since her statement regarding how she would be able to help. They waited until the darkness engulfed them in order to continue the conversation, and then Trask found a balcony near the top of the deserted, rotting dockside enclosure.
“Tell me what you meant,” he said sullenly, hearing Kirian sigh in response.
“My sister was sent to the galleys, the cargo galleys. The stench you remarked upon when we looked at that ship, reminded me of her plight. She has been on the galley ships for two years, if she still lives.”
“Did she look like you?” Trask said matter-of-factly, staring at her.
“What? Yes… yes she did. Why does that matter?”
He reached slowly for her blond hair. She did not stop him.
“She would last a while, then. You do not want to hear why.”
She raised her head, almost in defiance against his particular opinion.
“I can hear it,” she said, a slight catch in her voice, as if her defiance masked that perhaps she would really rather not want to hear what he said.
“Very well,” he nodded slowly, licking his lips. “A good looking oarslave will be used.” He held up his hand. “Not in the way you think. It is forbidden, on pain of death, for overseers to have sexual knowledge of a slave at the oar. The last thing a captain needs is to have slaves with neither strength nor endurance because their bellies are full with child. However, there are male overseers – and they are, after all, crueller and get more work from a slave before she collapses at the oar, her back raw from the lash. So, they are offered an alternative, something that satiates the lusts of the overseer, while enabling the slave’s body to focus on its purpose – keeping rhythm at the oar.”
Kirian winced. “You’re talking about offering the mouth?”
“Aye.”
“And what does that have to do with my sister?”
“It takes two years for an overseer to tire of a pretty slave woman. Be under no illusion, they will have stood in line to use her mouth, though by now she will be so degraded and worn that her looks will have gone and they will have moved on to newer slaves.”
He sighed. Tears were welling in Kirian’s eyes as she thought of her sister serving horrible men by sucking cock after cock.
“They will have kept her alive this long at least, in order to have their cocks tended to. The only danger is if she has rebelled, though the wooden horse and the whips will have meant that any rebellious behaviour would be short lived.
“The danger perhaps is now… though if she has been broken, and is strong, she might yet serve… live, five, perhaps ten more years, though by then she will be bent, broken…”
“Enough!” Kirian hissed.
“My apologies,” Trask intoned. “You said you might have a plan?”
“Lila… my sister… she was condemned because of a fight with a nobleman. He was her patron and she was a thief, belonging to the guild here on the Ferloss Isles. It is why I came here. She had left home years ago, I more recently. She had a reputation with the Thieves’ Guild. If anyone might know a way to have prisoners released from the Hellgate Prison you speak of, they should.”
Trask nodded at first, staring blankly into the middle distance as if the plan held water, then just as quickly shook his head.
“That can’t work,” he said quickly. “The problem with Thieves’ Guilds is that they are in fact… thieves, and tend not to trust the best natured requests for favours, even when they can get something out of it, and we, my dear, have no, what the merchants might call – collateral.” He looked askance at her. “Unless, that is, you know different?”
She shuddered slightly, pulling the cloak that he had offered her about her shoulders, where even now the red, raw lashes of the foul birches that had been used on her naked body were but dull red welts – as if months had passed since her public punishment. Trask’s magic was nothing if not effective.
“I know the head of the guild. Let me speak with him.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Trask interrupted.
“Why do you care? All you are interested in is getting your women back?”
He turned to her then, and raised a hand to her cheek. She gently gripped his wrist.
“Haven’t you had enough women?”
He smiled, kissing her gently on the shoulder, before caressing her with one strong arm.
Kirian wanted to draw away, but there was some feeling deep within her that wanted Trask to continue. She was not sure if it was a mixture of the fact that he had rescued her from her ordeal after being whipped on the wooden horse, or whether it was something else, something about the bronzed, muscled man, who sometimes appeared to be something much more than human in terms of the way he carried himself. She almost fell into his arms, whether from the weariness she seemed to be feeling as a result of the healing powers he had used or perhaps, despite her having been roughly taken by Lord Hardor then taken again by Captain Fallon in the dungeons, she simply desired to have another man’s attentions.
She shuddered as Trask moved his large hand across her breasts. The rag that she had been wearing almost fell away as she wriggled out of it, pushing her chest forward as if daring him to touch her more. Trask did not disappoint her, moving his hand toward her thighs, as she spread her legs to each side of the rough bench upon which she sat. He began to slowly probe and play with the folds of her womanhood, moistening her lips as he played with them, and she gasped then moaned in response, letting her body fall back a little and widening her legs still further as he probed more delicately yet deeper. She bit her lip. Her body felt so alive, yet she knew that it was because of this man’s sorcery. Was he casting more of his spells upon her even now? She did not care, simply knowing that the pleasure he was giving her made her feel so alive. She closed her eyes and felt dizzy for a moment, as Trask held her in his thrall, moving and massaging her sex in ways that she had never felt before.
“Uhnnnnn, wh… where did you learn how to do this?”
He did not reply, merely moved a little faster, a little deeper inside her.
He began to move his body towards hers, moving in rhythm as he began to undress, his large erection brushing her leg as she purred with excitement at the prospect of him entering her.
“Oh gods,” she gasped, writhing upon his hand in ecstasy, her arousal more intense than she could ever remember feeling. She reached a hand toward his cock, gripping it as she would a sword, rotating her thumb gently around the end, stimulating him. He moaned himself, but in a more controlled fashion than she had done. He remained in control, in control of the fiery explosion of pleasure that Kirian knew awaited her, as he moved toward her, his free hand groping her breasts as he laid her down upon the rough bench and began to explore her body with his lips…
